This invention relates to processing pieces of artwork in a computer-graphics illustration.
Many items in everyday life exhibit some degree of transparency. For example, a car windshield is almost completely transparent. The tinted glass of a bottle is less transparent than a car windshield; however, a viewer can still make out objects behind the bottle.
Simulating transparency in a computer-generated images can consume large amounts of computer memory due to the amount of data needed to describe the image. For example, an image printed by a typical computer printer is made up of millions of colored dots roughly 0.005 inches in size. For each dot, a computer must determine a color based on the different transparent graphics overlapping the area covered by the dot. The process of determining these colors is known as “compositing.”